tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post3848407452565437833..comments2024-03-14T11:50:14.761-04:00Comments on DarwinCatholic: Rhapsody in BlogDarwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-4859343760422149662019-04-25T12:50:02.639-04:002019-04-25T12:50:02.639-04:00Related: I often find myself wishing people would ...Related: I often find myself wishing people would read a book, but then catch myself: Is there any evidence they know how to read a book? The practice honed by a decade and a half of schooling is to look at any text to figure out what the teacher wants to hear. That a good or great book will have essentially unfathomable depths to it, that rewards repeated rereadings and plants the seeds of thoughts that will enliven and haunt your mind for the rest of your life - not so much. <br /><br />The founders of the Great Books Program spoke of the Great Dialogue: that 3,000+ year old interplay of ideas one joins when one really, truly reads great and good books, that bleeds over into one's daily life and shapes how we live. The Rhapsodic life, it might be called. <br /><br />I think this idea of deep, haunting thoughts that is a common experience of readers also is a marker of thoughtful bloggers. Hot takes? Meme wars? Smackdowns? A blogger craves not these things! Except to use them to explore what they mean in a larger context.<br /><br />I'm entering my 10th year as a blogger, started out just wanting someplace to explore and dump the peculiar ideas that haunt my life. Never had more than maybe a dozen regular readers; a popular post might get 100 visits. Clearly, as a strategy for world domination, it ain't working. But I'll keep doing it nonetheless. <br /><br />Joseph Moorehttps://yardsaleofthemind.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-88261630838214130632019-04-23T11:42:32.112-04:002019-04-23T11:42:32.112-04:00Yes. Great summing up of what I myself have felt. ...Yes. Great summing up of what I myself have felt. I do have to say that this year going back to Facebook I found I missed it even less than in previous years. And the process of writing in a longer form, whether letters or blogposts requires one to organize thoughts in a different way than shooting off a quick link. Roger Ebert talked about that when he began using his online journal to express himself on everything from rice cookers to life itself after he lost the ability to speak. It was different than writing his column. Julie D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/08384291674560438678noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-17520953221654420402019-04-22T10:48:21.750-04:002019-04-22T10:48:21.750-04:00I like this. I'm not a great blogger but I fin...I like this. I'm not a great blogger but I find I can't leave it behind either. I am perhaps too fond of social media and the quick take and the instant gratification. But I love the longer pieces, more thoughful, more composed. I'm very grateful that blogging hasn't died.Melanie Bettinellihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12557248434888642114noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-18635057928864578372019-04-22T10:23:54.180-04:002019-04-22T10:23:54.180-04:00Thank you for doing it.
A friend asked me back ...Thank you for doing it. <br /><br />A friend asked me back in January how I kept up with my intellectual life, and I've been chewing on it and sort of tracking what I do and don't do. Read, including blogs like yours. Listen to audiobooks and podcasts. Learn as fast as I can in order to work with my upper level students. I realized, talking to him, that I tend to use too many "insider" references when discussing an idea, because most of my conversation happens in my head as I chew over ideas from another's blog post or podcast. I notice this difficulty sometimes when I try to comment here, too, as I'm sure you may have. So I am trying to write more, because putting things down on paper, or at least in WORDS forces one to clarify and distill (and good conversation is limited here, although my upcoming teens are becoming good conversationalists, so it's not totally nonexistent like the toddlers-only years, hurrah). And the Bacon quote has been ringing in my head: "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man...." <br /><br />Glad to hear that you see blogging trudging along as it always has been. I've been kind of bummed as I see blogger after blogger that I read get a book contract and then melt away.... But I have not joined FB etc, as I know my family would go hungry and naked if I went down that path, so here I stay :)mandamumnoreply@blogger.com